Growing Pains
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: Reid's two children, Evina and Conan Reid, have turned 13 and are now in 8th grade. As the brand new teenagers begin learning how to navigate teenager-hood, Reid is struggling to navigate being a father to two teenagers, when it looks like he's figured it out, disaster strikes at the fall dance, threatening to destroy everything he holds most dear. Will it end in tragedy or triumph
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Reminiscence and Rebellion

_"__No parent can child-proof the world, a parent's job is to world-proof the child." – Doug Flanders _

Spencer Reid was on yet another late afternoon plane home, drifting between staring out the window, and reading a book, wondering where exactly the time had gone. It was Saturday, October 28th 2028, it was hard to believe that so much time had passed, or that his children, Evina and Conan, were now thirteen, and in eighth grade; and it seemed unreal to him that only a year from now they would be in high school, the exams their school mandated to see if they were eligible for the school's dual-credit program were fast approaching. If they made it, they could take college-credit classes at their current school beginning next year in ninth. Reid found himself wanting to slow down time, and go back to the days when the twins were little and fought over stuffed animals. These days, Conan would rather play chess by himself, or play ridiculously violent video games, most of which Rossi had gotten for him against Reid's wishes and better judgment… and as for Evina, sweet little Evi, had gone from being a daddy's girl to a surly, moody teenager with a rebellious streak… He wanted to go back to the days when she'd run and jump into his arms when he got home, and beg and plead until he agreed to read to her from the Grimm Tales until she fell asleep, usually in his lap, with her little head resting against his body, warm, safe, and content. That had happened so often when she and her brother were little that he'd almost made an art out of lifting her up and tucking her into her own bed without disturbing her. Why couldn't they have stayed little like that forever?

That wasn't the only change that had taken place since the twins had been born, though he seldom realized it, as the children had grown up, he, Maeve, and their friends had been growing old. Rossi had retired, permanently this time, as had Blake, Hotch had stepped down as unit chief and Morgan had stepped up, new agents had come in… and even he, once the youngest of them all, was now forty-seven and had twenty-four years of experience under his belt. Jack, Hotch's son had graduated in the top ten of his class at NYU and was now in the academy, preparing to follow in his father's footsteps, Henry, JJ's son, was nineteen now, and in his sophomore year at Yale… so much had changed. All four of those kids had grown up so fast, it seemed almost unreal that the twins were already in middle school, or that he had just celebrated his forty-seventh birthday. It seemed only yesterday, back when he and Maeve had only been married a year and a half that they found out they were having twins.

…

Back at home, Evina was trying to think of an excuse not to be waiting near the front door when her father got home. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her exceptionally long, light chestnut hair, fell around her shoulders in wavy spirals, only now, there were sections throughout, that were a dark lavender purple. Mom had gone to her lab, to record some time sensitive data for one of her experiments, Dad was on a plane and wouldn't be home for another few hours yet. So Evina had taken the opportunity to finally use the temporary hair dye that Aunt Penelope had gotten her for her birthday.

Mom was completely against her desire to try unnatural colors in her hair, so Garcia had given her the dye in secret, one of the afternoons back in September when she picked Evina and her brother up from school, it was wrapped up in colorful wrapping paper with a purple satin ribbon tied in a bow around the center.

…

1 Month Earlier:

"Hey, Evi, hold on a sec…" Garcia had said when she'd pulled up to their house, after Conan had already bounded out of the car toward the garage door.

"What's up?" Evina had asked.

"Here…" She replied, handing her the three by six inch box. "I know your birthday was a couple of months ago but…"

"Aunt Penelope, you already got us birthday presents this year… remember? You got me the tickets to this year's Phantasmagoria so I could go with Dad? After he was convinced they were already sold out?" Evina replied.

"Well, let's just say that this one is just between you and me… stick it in your bookbag and whatever you do, don't tell your parents I gave it to you, your mom would kill me…and your dad just might let her…"

Evina had nodded, thanked her, and headed inside.

…

Present Day:

Evina stood there in the small, brownish crème-colored bathroom, staring at her reflection, lost in thought. Truth be told, Dad wasn't as against the hair dye as Mom was, he just seemed to find it odd that Evina was no-longer satisfied with her hair color the way it was. What he was actually against, was something much deeper, something that made him react adversely to anything that reminded him that she and Conan were officially teenagers… Whatever it was, it would almost certainly erase any chance of Dad taking her side of this one when mom saw her like this.

_Mom is gonna kill me, and Dad just might back her up on this one… _She thought to herself. "Maybe tonight wasn't the night to do this…I've never broken the rules before, Mom and Dad are going to be so mad at me, and if I can't even face them…how am I supposed to face the kids at school?" She asked.

"That's a good question Sis…" Conan answered, standing in the doorway. Conan was small for his age, as both of them had always been, since they were genetically identical…almost, he shared the light chestnut hair they'd inherited from their father, and the green eyes they both possessed that were just like their mom's. For a thirteen year old boy, Conan was small, slight… frankly…he still looked like a fifth-grader.

She sighed heavily. "Conan…" she began in an exasperated tone. "Don't you ever knock?"

"Do you always talk to yourself while you're in here?" he asked.

"I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to my reflection…" she retorted.

"Same difference, and word of advice, that's going to freak Dad out way more than your hair…one word…Grandma…"

"Grandma has schizophrenia… I don't… she talks to voices she hears thinking that they're really there when they aren't… I talk to my reflection, knowing full well that that's what I'm doing. Bit of a difference there… besides…Dad's not, so we probably aren't either… but if Dad hears you talk about Grandma that way, it's safe to say you can kiss your Xbox goodbye…"

Before Conan could reply, they heard the front door come unlocked and open downstairs.

"Evina, Conan, I'm home…" Reid called out.

"We're up here Dad!" They called down the stairs.

"Well, here's your chance to see what Dad thinks of your hair before Mom comes home…" Conan pointed out. "This could be your best bet…"

He was right… Evina took a deep breath, smiled nervously at her reflection in the mirror, and followed her brother toward the staircase.

"Hey guys, I missed you two…" He said with a smile, standing at the foot of the stairs with his jacket and shoes still on.

"Hi Dad!" Conan said happily, racing down the stairs and giving his father a high five.

"Hi Buddy, where's your sister…?" Reid asked.

Suddenly, Evina appeared at the top of the stairs. "Hi Dad…"

"Evi…wow…Evina Dianna Reid, what have you done to your hair?" he asked in surprise.

"I… dyed it…" she replied nervously.

"I can see that…" he said.

"Then why the hell did you ask?" she asked indignantly, realizing only an instant later that she'd gone too far.

"Young lady, you do not talk to me like that! We do not use that kind of language under this roof, you know that…"

"I'm sorry…" she said remorsefully, avoiding eye contact with her father.

"I thought your mother and I told you, you couldn't dye your hair…and you did it anyway…" he told her.

"But why Dad? Why did you guys say no? I mean it's not like I was asking to start smoking or blowing off school work… I just wanted to put purple streaks in my hair…besides, this is temporary, and it's not a tattoo or an ear gage, or a nose ring…"

"I hope you realize we're vetoing those too…"

"I figured as much… look, Dad, I've wanted to do this for years…you and Mom kept saying that as long as it wasn't permanent, like a piercing or a tattoo, I could do it when I was older… that was when I was eleven, that was two years ago. I'm thirteen now, thirteen is older…"

"Where did you even get purple hair dye?" He asked.

"It was a birthday present…" she admitted.

"From who…?"

"On that, I've been sworn to secrecy…" she told him.

"Never mind, I'm pretty sure I know who…did she teach you how to use it too?" Reid asked, genuinely surprised by how good it actually looked, he had to admit, she'd done a decent job.

"Actually I watched about twenty YouTube tutorials before I did this…"

"Where is your mom?" Reid asked. "I thought she was supposed to be off today…"

"She was, but she went into the lab for a few hours to record some data from one of her experiments…it was one of those things that couldn't wait until tomorrow or Monday…"

"Ah… Well, it's done now, just, go to your room…I'll talk to your Mom about this when she gets home, if I were you, I'd make sure my room was spotless and all my homework was done…if it isn't I suggest you get busy…consider yourself grounded until your mother and I decide if you are or not…"

…

"She did what?!" Maeve asked an hour later, when she'd arrived home and she and Spencer were sitting at the kitchen table, with a pumpkin pie that Maeve had made the day before.

"She dyed streaks of her hair purple…" he told her.

"I thought we told her no…we both agreed she's still a little young for that…"

"I don't think we were specific enough, the first time she asked, we told her that as long as it wasn't permanent, she could change her appearance if she wanted when she was older. That was two years ago Maeve, she _is _older, and technically we never gave her an operational definition of 'older'. We should have said, sixteen or seventeen, or once you graduate if that's what we meant…" He explained.

"Personally, I just don't understand why she wasn't satisfied with her hair the way it was…or why she of all people…who never, ever wants to let anyone cut it, would want to damage it with hair dye…" Maeve commented.

"I don't think she's made the connection, she either doesn't realize that hair dye damages hair, or she's convinced herself that her own hair is immune…that type of thinking is actually pretty common at her age." Reid explained.

"So what do we do about this?" Maeve asked.

"Honestly, I think she's testing the waters, pushing boundaries, starting with the rules we set she doesn't like… I know you really don't like this Maeve, but we have to start picking our battles with both of them, the more we crack down on things that don't actually amount to real trouble, the more they'll pull away… I think we should just let this one go. That being said, she's still grounded tonight and tomorrow…"

"So much for not cracking down…" Maeve replied.

"Well that's not the only rule she broke…"

"Ah…"

***End of Chapter 1* Please let me know what you think, I greatly appreciate all feedback! Thank You and I hope You enjoyed this first portion...**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: What's Up with Conan?

"Morning Reid." Garcia called out the following Monday morning, as he walked into the bull pen.

"Morning Garcia…" Reid replied.

Garcia could sense a strange awkwardness between them, and immediately began wracking her brain to figure out what had caused it.

"Reid, is something wrong?" she asked, as he sat down at his desk.

"Um…Evina made use of a certain belated birthday present on Saturday…I came home and streaks of her hair were purple…She wouldn't tell me who gave it to her, but my guess is that you had something to do with it…"

"Oh…well, I mean…the twins are teenagers now Reid… and you and Maeve told her, she could dye her hair when she was older, that was like two years ago and that future in which she is older is now…" she reminded him. "Besides, it's temporary, once she grows it out and washes it a few dozen times, all the color will be gone…"

"But Maeve and I decided that 'when you're older' meant when she graduates from high school…" he said. "To be honest, I'm not really upset about the hair dye…that's just a behavioral sign of a much deeper problem…"

"Ok Reid, first of all, you know as well as I do that both of those kids are shoe-ins for the dual-credit program, which means, they'll be graduating high school, with their first two years of college already in the bag…second, is graduation what you told her?"

"Well no… Actually…we never really specified other than, 'not yet', and 'when you're older…' I know we should have but…we just, didn't…I guess we just assumed that she understood that what we meant was 'no until further notice'."

"Then let me give you a little advice on surviving the next seven to ten years with those two, especially her, be specific and be consistent, those two things put together will save you and Maeve a lot of grief…the teenage years are a whole other animal, and when it means getting what they want without having to feel bad about it, they'll latch on to semantics, any weakness in the wording you guys use that they can rationalize as amounting a loophole, they're going to use…I should know, I was like the dictionary definition of the word rebel, and that really started right around their age, but like them I also loved and respected my parents enough that I couldn't bring myself to genuinely not care about what they said or wanted."

"Yeah, I'm starting to get that…This is the first time she's really challenged us like this, and it's certainly the first time she's lashed out when confronted about something like that. It's just…so unlike her…we used to be so close, but since September, half the time she won't even look back at me when she gets out of the car when I drop her off at school…and Conan has been even more distant. He just spends most of the night in the game room playing Assassin's Creed and Halo…we actually had to limit him to two hours a night because he was skipping dinner, even his grades are starting to suffer…I just don't get it…"

"Don't you remember what it was like when you were their age?" Garcia asked.

"Garcia, when I was thirteen I was a freshman in college, hoping that I had escaped the for lack of a better term, hell hole, that was my high school and all the relentless bullying that came with being there. The twins aren't ahead like I was, they're in eighth grade, with peers their own age. They're both very bright, they've each maintained an A average all through school up to this point, and got into one of the best k-12 public schools in DC, it's a charter school that they had to test into… I just asked them over the summer what their goal was for high school, whether they wanted to work toward graduating early or go the full four years but take dual credit and AP classes the whole time...they both decided on the latter. So, they're undeniably smart, but they're still more normal than I ever had a chance at being. At the end of the day, they're two normal teenagers. I never really got to be a normal teenager."

"Ok, reset, remember what Henry was like at their age? How he turned into a socially withdrawn little terror for awhile, routinely almost giving JJ and Will, not to mention you, a heart attack?"

"Don't remind me…"

"Exactly, thank god for varsity soccer…" Garcia replied.

"That's it…" Reid thought out loud.

"What's it?"

"Garcia you're a genius!"

"Um…as much as I love hearing that, especially from you…I have to ask, what am I a genius about currently?"

"Sports…that's the answer, if Conan got involved in a team sport, he'd have to put down his video games, he'd have to learn to interact better, and he'd have an extra motivation to keep his grades up…I just didn't think of it because I was never the athletic type…"

…

Meanwhile at the twins' middle school:

Conan was outside with his first period science class. It was an unusually warm day for late October, so they were outside in the courtyard, seeing how the sunlight powered the solar battery on the fan that he had built, and record how the changing position of the sun, relative to the position of the solar panel on top of the battery effected the speed of the fan.

He was watching it intently, being careful to sit so that his body wasn't blocking the sunlight. Suddenly, Kyle, one of his less friendly classmates was standing behind him and casting him and the fan in shadow.

"What do you want Kyle?" Conan asked.

"What kind of fan thing is that? You build that yourself Twerp?"

"Of course I did…we all did…speaking of which, don't you have your own work to do?" he asked.

"Of course I do…" Kyle sneered. Then the much larger boy picked up Conan's solar-powered fan project. "If you say anything…I'll stuff you in the lunch room trash, also, from now on, you're giving me your lunch money, or I'll stuff you in the lunch room trash." He threatened. Then he ran away with it. "Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Colby…I found my project…!" Kyle yelled.

Conan just stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Kyle had taken his project and claimed it as his own, instead of just partnering up with somebody who hadn't lost or forgotten theirs, Kyle had actually stolen his… granted, Mrs. Colby had already marked him for having his project…but that was only half the assignment…and he needed the fan to finish the solar power worksheet… which was going to be due at the end of the period. What was he going to do? Should he partner up with somebody else? But they're results would be off compared to his, and besides that, he wasn't exactly a people person. Dad would probably advise him to tell Mrs. Colby what happened so that she would make Kyle give it back; but, if he did that…she'd also give Kyle a zero on the assignment for cheating, which would make Kyle angry with him and turn him into even more of a jerk. He could wait until he got home and tell mom…or dad…if he was actually coming home tonight…but then he'd just look like a fraidy-cat, not to mention a baby… No, somehow he had to take care of this on his own, without it being too obvious… what should he do?

For a few seconds, he managed to muster the resolve to tell Mrs. Colby. He started walking toward her. "Um…Mrs. Colby…Actually that's…" but she didn't seem to hear him, and as quickly has it had come, the self-confidence required to tell Mrs. Colby what had actually happened, left him.

When the hour came to an end, Conan turned in his half-done worksheet and sadly headed off to his next class.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Lunch Room

Elsewhere on campus, Evina was in Gym, running around the outdoor track with her friend Amy. Amy was a short, muscular girl of Korean decent, she had been one of Evina's closest friends since the second grade, and although she was under tremendous pressure from her parents to excel is literally everything she became involved in, she still always seemed to manage to keep up with the gossip among all three campuses of their school.

Their task was simple, since they were still in the track and field unit, all they had to do for the remainder of the hour was run or jog as much as they could, doing laps around the track for the remainder of the hour. It was the kind of task that allowed them to talk and semi hangout without getting penalized for not trying hard enough or carrying on a conversation during class that wasn't class-related.

"So…Evi, are you going to ask Quinn to the fall formal?" Amy asked.

"No…in fact I'm probably not even going to the fall formal…" she replied glumly. "Besides, even if I went…I couldn't ask Quinn…I'm not allowed to date until I'm fifteen…Dad would freak out if I so much as mentioned going with a boy…"

"Actually you might want to count yourself lucky… My parents won't let me date until I've graduated, they say it would be too much of a distraction and that I should focus one-hundred percent of my attention into getting into an Ivy League college…if I got rejected by every single Ivy…I think they'd disown me. Trust me, you have the cool parents."

"They haven't said that I have to get into an Ivy, all they have said about college is that we need to keep our grades up and study for the high school placement exams, because the dual credit program will look very, very good on college applications and as long as we can do it, we should, that, and thy want us to take on a second foreign language starting next year… but it's not like the expectation isn't there even if they're trying not to pressure us, I mean come on, my dad had Yale for a safety school…Yale was his fall back, Mom got a full ride scholarship to Georgetown on academics alone…those are big shoes to fill…"

"Ok, backup for a second…I thought we _had _to take a third language, isn't it a graduation requirement that we take three more years of Latin and two years of whatever our third language is?" Amy asked.

"Yes, but per Dad's tempered suggestion, two of my elective slots will be taken up by the other two years…" Evina explained.

"Also, isn't your dad like…a genius or something? Wasn't he the guy who graduated when he was like, younger than we are now?" She asked.

"Well yeah but…"

"But that's why Yale was his plan B, no accounting for natural talent…you don't remember every single thing you read…pretty close to it, and what you do is darn near verbatim, I'll give you that but…"

"But what?"

"But you're not him, and he always seemed to me like a reasonable enough guy that he doesn't expect you to be…I think you're reading into it too much, the bar might be high, but at least they've set one you can still actually reach…you bring home an A- or a B+ on an assignment once in a while and nobody yells at you, they just tell you to focus or try harder or something like that, I get grounded for a month."

"Ok guys, the hour is almost over, hustle in and head back to your respective locker rooms." Came Mr. Green's booming voice. He was a tall, thin, man with thick black hair.

At his command, Evina and Amy sped up and headed back toward the main school building, once inside, they jogged down the staircase that led back to the girls' locker room, where they changed out of their school-issued T-shirts and athletic pants for their classroom uniform of white button-down shirts, navy-blue sweater vests, and knee-length khaki skirts, before racing off to their separate second-period classes.

A few hours later:

The eighth grade students didn't have lunch until sixth period, the last of the three lunches of the middle school campus. The lunch hall was a separate building that was connected to the main building by an underground tunnel from the north end of the west wing. As the eighth grade students filed out of their fifth period classes, the twins kept their eyes peeled, trying to find each other in the crowded hallway.

Evina finally located her brother at the foot of the stairs that went from the east wing down into the tunnel. She stepped up onto the railing and looked over the side of the staircase. Below her, a boy whose name she didn't know, but who she had seen in the hallways from time to time, had lifted Conan almost a foot off the ground by his collar, and had him pinned to the wall at the back of the staircase.

"Hey you jerk, leave my brother alone!" she yelled, rushing down the stairs toward them.

"Give me your lunch money twerp…!" Kyle demanded.

"Use your own…" Conan told him.

Suddenly Evina appeared behind them and yanked at the back of Kyle's shirt.

"I said. Leave. My. Brother. Alone. Put him down, right now…" She yelled.

Kyle shoved Conan harder into the wall. "One day, your sister won't be here to save you." He sneered, then he put Conan down and proceeded into the lunch room.

"Come on Conan…" Evina told him, and the twins followed the rest of the crowd into the lunch room.

Upon entering the room, they immediately got into the lunch line, got their trays of food, and went to join Amy at their usual table.

While they were eating, Conan was unusually quiet, and just sat there silently, eating and reading an RPG manual. He avoided eye contact with the girls, he knew that Evi was no-doubt upset at what she had seen, and probably wanted to offer him sisterly advice, but really, he didn't want to hear it. Kyle was his problem, and he wanted to find his own solution, deal with it on his own. He couldn't give her or Amy any indication that he wanted to talk.

"Conan…" he heard his sister's voice call.

He didn't reply.

"Conan!"

"What?" He asked, finally putting his book down.

"Why do you let that guy treat you like that…?" She asked.

"Who… Kyle?"

"If that's the same kid who just tried to beat you up for six dollars in change, then yes…"

"It's none of your business…"

"Um, Conan…I'm your sister, if someone's messing with you, that _is _my business. At the very least, you need to tell mom and dad, or a teacher, and if you don't and this gets worse, I will.

"Um, Dad doesn't get home until seven-thirty, at the earliest, and that's if he's coming home at all…" he reminded her.

"Then tell Mom, or call dad if he's gone on a case in another state.…my point is, don't let this jerk push you around like this…"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Father and Son

Evina was right, and Conan knew it. He couldn't continue to let Kyle treat him like garbage. Just three years ago, back in fifth grade, he wouldn't have. Back then, he was one of the bigger kids on the elementary campus, as a fifth-grader he was one of the older ones. Now he was in his last year of middle school, so, logically, the same thing should occur, except it didn't. Back then there hadn't been a lot of size difference among the fifth-grade boys, now, there were kids who looked like they should be in the second half of high school, and kids like him who were well, tiny and hit their growth spurt yet… Kyle, was at least eight or nine inches taller than he was, and over twice as wide…a nearly six foot wall of solid muscle. What chance did he actually stand if it came to a fight between the two of them? Evi had been so confident, despite the fact that she was almost as small as he was, although, unlike him, she'd shot up a few inches over the past summer, and yet she'd managed to intimidate him on attitude alone. Conan wished that he could do that.

He thought about this as he was doing his homework. He had a plan, he just had to implement it…if he joined one of the sports teams, he'd finally have some friends of his own and a popularity boost, then Kyle would have to leave him alone… the only remaining dilemma was, which team to join, and how to make sure that he actually made the team. Since that was something he didn't have an answer for yet, when he was finished with his homework he put the sheets of paper back into their corresponding class folders and went to play his two hours of video games before bedtime at ten.

The game room was a relatively plain-looking room, with the same brownish cream colored paint on the walls that covered most of the house's interior. It had dark gray carpet, a forty-inch TV framed by a dark oak cabinet, with two shelves directly below the TV which held an Xbox, a blue-ray player, and an ancient VCR/DVD combo that amazingly still worked. Next to the TV, was another set of shelves, stacked with video games and movies, behind a glass door. To the right of the TV, against the wall, was a low-riding bookshelf, this one stacked with board games, most of which had gone untouched for almost a year. Directly across from the TV was a brown leather couch that Dad had brought from the apartment he'd lived in before he married Mom.

It was eight forty-five, when he heard his father knock on the game room door.

"Come in…" he called out, as he continued playing the latest re-make of _Assassin's Creed. _

"Hi Conan…I'm home…"

"Hi Dad…" he replied, not taking his eyes off the game.

"Who's winning?" Reid asked, really just trying to open a line of communication.

"I am, it's single player Dad, if I don't win, nobody does…" he replied.

"Right…um, could you pause that for a few minutes? I want to talk to you…" Reid told him, sitting down on the couch next to his son.

"Ok…" he said, pushing the pause button on the game controller. "What is it? Am…I in trouble?"

"No you're not in trouble…but I um…I went online, just now when I warmed up some dinner that your mom had saved for me and…I looked at your grades…Conan, as of today you have four zeros and three incomplete assignments in Mrs. Colby's science class. One of which is that in-class lab on solar power that was due this morning. What's going on?"

"Nothing…I just lost them ok?" Conan replied defensively.

"Conan…you're one of the most organized kids I know. You've never had a problem keeping track of your homework before… and even if that were true, one would expect it to show up in more than one class. As a profiler I know that there's an explanation for this change in behavior and as your father I can't help but think that something's been bothering you. Whatever it is, I want to help you, but in order to do that I need you to tell me what's really going on."

"So you're not mad about the bad grade on the solar power lab?" Conan asked.

"No…as long as you didn't get that score through lack of effort, which I know you well enough to know isn't why, by the way, you got a twenty out of thirty points…that's a D Conan, and your term grade has officially dropped from a ninety-one to an eighty-eight." Reid told him. "Conan, that means you've gone from an A to a B in the space of a few weeks…"

"What? But that's the lowest it's ever been…" Conan replied, startled and embarrassed.

"I know…and I shouldn't have to remind you how important this year is for you, if you lose your A average, you won't be allowed to take the placement exam to get into the honors program for high school."

"I know…"

"What's the solution then?" Reid asked.

"Bring my science grade back up?" he proposed.

"Sounds like a good idea to me…but how exactly do you plan to make sure that happens? If this pattern continues, it'll get worse instead of better."

"I know Dad! It won't…I promise…" Conan replied.

"Conan, you don't have to tell me what's really going on if you don't want to…but should, and you can…I'm here, and I'm on your side…whatever it is, you don't have to be afraid to tell me. You always have the choice to come to me, you should know that…"

"When? When I'm I supposed to come to you Dad? I barely see you during the week…you're home early tonight, usually you're gone before we get up and when you do come home at night it's usually not until we're already asleep…" Conan reminded him.

It took them both a second to process the fact that Conan had said all that out loud. It was as if some invisible floodgate had burst open. All his life, Conan had largely kept his mouth shut about his feelings regarding his father's work schedule. After all, it had been that way, since long before he and Evina had been born. While no one had ever said it to them, he and his sister had accepted early on, that part of growing up, was accepting that this was their life, this was the way it worked. When your father was a federal agent, certain sacrifices had to be made. That had always been the beginning and the end of it. It wasn't up for debate, but secretly, Conan had always wished that his father was home earlier and more often, he had long wished that nights like tonight, could be every night.

"Conan…"

"I'm sorry Dad…"

"Don't be…tell you what…remember when you were little and you and I used to play chess every night I was home, no matter how late it was?"

"I miss that…"

"Me too, how about we start that back up again…I'll let you play Xbox longer over the weekend, you and me, right now, dust off the old chess set…" he commanded.

Conan saved and turned off his game, then got their own wooden chess set off of the board game shelf. Together they set up the board on the floor in front of the couch.

It wasn't until they started playing, that Conan finally began to open up to his father.

"There's this guy in my science class, Kyle…he's a big jerk, especially to me…he stole my solar fan, when I was only halfway done with the worksheet. That's why I had to turn it in, incomplete. He's been messing with me outside of class too…"

"How long has this been going on?"

"A few weeks…"

"Have you told anyone?"

"No…"

"Conan…"

"What? It's not like anyone will believe me or back me up…The teachers don't see anything because he's smart enough to only do it when they aren't looking. I'm a shy nerd whose best friend is his own sister. I try to make other friends but I just…can't get any words to come out when I try to talk to anyone new. He's twice my size Dad…"

Reid tried not to, but he couldn't help but shake his head and smile.

"Dad…what's so funny?"

"Nothing…just that, you sound like I did in high school."

"I do?"

"Conan, when I was your age and younger, I was a fish out of water…and talk about being bullied by students physically larger than you…my classmates were five or six years older than I was. So I do get it…" Reid replied, moving one of his pawns.

"I know, that's not why I didn't want to tell you…" Conan replied, moving his bishop out to the front line.

"Ok, then why didn't you…?"

"Because it's embarrassing. I'm thirteen years old. I should be able to handle this kind of thing by myself by now…and I will, I have a plan…"

"What's your plan…?"

"Dad…can I go out for track, and possibly baseball this spring?" Conan asked.

"I don't see why not, and I'll talk to your teacher and see if she'll give you another chance on the solar lab…"

"Thanks Dad…"


End file.
